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“We Are The Lazy Generation” – Not a Lazy Song

Because I enjoy the absurdity of life and all that brings, I also tend to like irony and pointing it out. I like dawdling on the things that make people think, even if that thinking is mostly interrupted thoughts that are wildly disjointed and interspersed with “Why is that racoon carrying an AK 47 without a proper permit?!”

Which (obviously) brings me to a band called The F Ups (I’m not censoring their name, they are) and their song Lazy Generation which is well known for being in the (amazing) game Burnout 3: Takedown.

There’s not much to the song itself other than the title itself which is probably the laziest part of it. Most of the lyrics are just repeating that they are a part of the “lazy generation”. What is the lazy generation though?

According to the band this generation is marked by unreliability (“Stand up and shout / we won’t be there for you”), good at wasting their time, nihilistic (“Nothing we do ever seems to matter / Just like shit on a silver platter shines”) and…

Actually, that’s pretty much it.

There’s not much else except willing to tell people who call them “social mutations” to “just drop dead and die” so they have a bit of spunk in defending their laziness. And what’s laziness without a little bit of pride in it, right?

When I think of laziness I definitely think of unreliability to some extent. After all, if you’re not going to exert a certain amount of effort you’re not exactly going to be reliable when more energy than that is required. When jobs want me to give a shit about something I don’t have the time or energy for, sometimes I simply won’t do it.

As an example, I was told yesterday to check the coolers every hour or something. But I didn’t because this was a very disruptive schedule when I’m also trying to help customers at the counter. And as much as I like coolers at times I don’t enjoy them enough to make that sort of disruptive commitment.

So fuck my manager, I didn’t do it.

And in cases like that, fuck yeah being part of the Lazy Generation. There’s no shame in not doing shit that is degrading that puts you over your personal comfort zone and there’s no good incentive to do so.

On the second point, I suppose I’m good at wasting my time when it comes to work. But obviously The F Ups have something more broad in mind for both being unreliable and wasting our time. That said, I don’t see anything wrong with being unreliable or wasting your time if that’s what folks want to do.

But on the other hand there are dangers with any sort of extreme and taking unreliability or any of these traits (including the nihilistic ones) probably wouldn’t lead to good consequences. Which is what The F Ups are obviously referencing to some extent, which makes even more sense given that slackers tend to be a pretty self-deprecating bunch.

Unreliability to things like capitalism and the state is one thing but this band likely has a broader commitment involved that includes generalized and interpersonal unreliability, et. al. which might be problematic for society, etc. But as I’ve been arguing for quite a while I think laziness is a plenty admirable trait, it just needs to be done the right way.

Which isn’t to suggest I have the best way to be laziness or something like that. Despite my love of wasting my time at work I do tend to feel like I’m sometime wasting my life doing pointless things. But that’s usually my depression talking and depression tends to tell you lies so it can dig itself deeper into your neurons.

As for the “nihilistic” tendencies, well nihilism is sub-optimal to say the least, so I’d prefer laziness to not have anything to do with it. I don’t even have much to say here except that this is a fairly stereotypical picture of what it means to be lazy. But being nihilistic and lazy aren’t necessarily the same things, you can be lazy and be optimistic and idealistic about life and the way things are gonna go for you and other.

You just might not think a ton of effort is needed to make it happen.

That’s another thing about laziness that I don’t think I’ve brought up before: It’s relative.

Who decides what lazy is? If you’re not working 40 hours a week, are you lazy? If you’re doing less than your co-workers but they’re doing unhealthy amounts of labor, are you lazy? Would it even matter in that case when you’d be hurting yourself? So often people don’t ask more basic questions about how we identify and judge people because we’d prefer to have some sort of moral high ground over them instead of using empathy and rational analysis.

To get to the title though, I’m tongue and cheek responding to this song by accusing it of being a very active song. First off it’s a punk song so the whole song while short (under 3 minutes) is incredibly fast paced. The lyrics are very quickly sung and the tempo of the song is very upbeat and quick.

There’s actually a solo in here but it feels like it’s a bit misplaced or wandered in and quickly left. In other words it’s a very quick and easy solo and while fast it certainly sounds lazy to some extent or another.

One of the customers at 7-Eleven said I really overthink things when it comes to music. And yeah, I guess that’s true but what fun is life if you’re not going to be constantly thinking about ridiculous things that occur to you?

I mean what else am I supposed to do, be lazy?

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